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#536 - The Others
Alejandro Amenábar, 2001
A woman who lives in a large mansion with her two extremely photosensitive children starts to believe that the house is haunted.
The Others is a decent enough throw-back to old-school haunted house horrors that rely on the building of bloodless dread and potentially supernatural mystery, and that's enough to guarantee it being a good film despite the rather generic first impression it creates. The film's opening credits feel a bit unnecessary; certain films just work better without them, especially when listing cast members who play characters that appear at crucial or surprising moments and thus expecting certain actors to show up does take some of the surprise out of it. In any case, the film does well at establishing its post-WWII setting as a trio of out-of-work servants walk up to the front door of a large mansion inhabited by a woman (Nicole Kidman) and her two young children. A series of scenes involving Kidman giving her prospective employees a tour of the house develops a plot that's already creepy enough even without the possibility of any paranormal activity. It turns out that Kidman's children are extremely allergic to any light source that's stronger than a small fire, hence a complex system involving door-locking and curtain-drawing so as to prevent them from suffering extremely painful and possibly fatal reactions. That's without the kids acting like the other pale weird kids common to British-looking horror as they naturally become the first to cotton on to the fact that there is something very weird going on with the usual bumps in the night, which naturally result in a disbelieving Kidman growing dangerously paranoid.
The Others maintains a fairly consistent sense of unease thanks to its small but complex ensemble and ever-present threat of not just ghosts but dangerous sunlight, that's about all that the film really has going for it. The film does touch upon themes involving family, post-war anxieties, and religious subtext as it examines what the characters' lives are like even without any imminent peril; while these concepts are generally handled in a satisfactory manner, sometimes they do drag the film down (such as the entire sub-plot involving Christopher Eccleston's character, which doesn't feel particularly essential to the plot beyond some mild thematic relevance). The film is generally good at working the less-is-more angle when it comes to parceling out information about the antagonists, though that does mean it becomes surprisingly easy to anticipate how things will develop. Performances are generally decent, though the music is perhaps a little too dramatic for its own. As a result, I can respect The Others as a generally competent homage to old-school horror that brings in some fairly fresh modern sensibilities, but that doesn't feel like enough to make it a classic.
Alejandro Amenábar, 2001
A woman who lives in a large mansion with her two extremely photosensitive children starts to believe that the house is haunted.
The Others is a decent enough throw-back to old-school haunted house horrors that rely on the building of bloodless dread and potentially supernatural mystery, and that's enough to guarantee it being a good film despite the rather generic first impression it creates. The film's opening credits feel a bit unnecessary; certain films just work better without them, especially when listing cast members who play characters that appear at crucial or surprising moments and thus expecting certain actors to show up does take some of the surprise out of it. In any case, the film does well at establishing its post-WWII setting as a trio of out-of-work servants walk up to the front door of a large mansion inhabited by a woman (Nicole Kidman) and her two young children. A series of scenes involving Kidman giving her prospective employees a tour of the house develops a plot that's already creepy enough even without the possibility of any paranormal activity. It turns out that Kidman's children are extremely allergic to any light source that's stronger than a small fire, hence a complex system involving door-locking and curtain-drawing so as to prevent them from suffering extremely painful and possibly fatal reactions. That's without the kids acting like the other pale weird kids common to British-looking horror as they naturally become the first to cotton on to the fact that there is something very weird going on with the usual bumps in the night, which naturally result in a disbelieving Kidman growing dangerously paranoid.
The Others maintains a fairly consistent sense of unease thanks to its small but complex ensemble and ever-present threat of not just ghosts but dangerous sunlight, that's about all that the film really has going for it. The film does touch upon themes involving family, post-war anxieties, and religious subtext as it examines what the characters' lives are like even without any imminent peril; while these concepts are generally handled in a satisfactory manner, sometimes they do drag the film down (such as the entire sub-plot involving Christopher Eccleston's character, which doesn't feel particularly essential to the plot beyond some mild thematic relevance). The film is generally good at working the less-is-more angle when it comes to parceling out information about the antagonists, though that does mean it becomes surprisingly easy to anticipate how things will develop. Performances are generally decent, though the music is perhaps a little too dramatic for its own. As a result, I can respect The Others as a generally competent homage to old-school horror that brings in some fairly fresh modern sensibilities, but that doesn't feel like enough to make it a classic.